A 48-year-old Commerce Township man remains in critical condition after being struck by a car while crossing West Maple Road on the Michigan Air Line Trail early Wednesday morning. The crash happened just after 6 a.m. near Grandview Drive, as the man rode his bicycle northeast along the trail while a 65-year-old Walled Lake woman drove northwest on West Maple Road. The driver was not injured and stayed at the scene, while the cyclist was taken to a local hospital.
What Investigators Say Happened at the Crossing
The Oakland County Sheriff's Office is investigating the crash, according to ClickOnDetroit. Investigators say the cyclist failed to yield at the marked crosswalk while crossing West Maple Road, per the Oakland County Sheriff's Office. The man was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, the outlet reports.
Michigan law treats bicyclists in crosswalks much like pedestrians, though with caveats that could bear on the investigation. Under Michigan's vehicle code, a cyclist using a marked crosswalk has the rights and responsibilities of a pedestrian, yet must still yield right-of-way and obey official traffic control devices. It remains unclear whether the push-button warning beacon at the West Maple Road crossing was present or functioning at the time of Wednesday's crash, a detail investigators have not addressed.
A Trail Built to Avoid This Kind of Collision
The Michigan Air Line Trail is a 7.5-mile multi-use pathway running through Wixom, Walled Lake and Commerce Township along a converted former railway corridor, according to Pure Michigan. Most of its street crossings are equipped with marked crosswalks and push-button-activated warning beacons for trail users, per TrailLink. Grade-separated bridges, however, are reserved for the trail's most dangerous highway crossings.
That approach dates back to October 2018, when the Michigan Department of Transportation and Commerce Township completed a $6 million pedestrian overpass over M-5 specifically to eliminate a dangerous surface crossing along the trail, according to the Michigan Trails & Greenways Alliance. More recently, the Commerce Township Board of Trustees approved $45,000 in tri-party infrastructure funds this past February to update amenities along the trail, according to Charter Township of Commerce records.
Part of a Statewide Surge in Bicycle Crashes
Wednesday's crash adds to a troubling statewide trend. Bicyclist fatalities in Michigan jumped 64 percent between 2020 and 2022, with 103 cyclists killed compared to 63 deaths in the preceding three-year span, according to data from the State of Michigan. In 2023 alone, the state logged 1,480 bicycle-involved crashes resulting in 24 deaths and 1,136 injuries, with August ranking as the single worst month statewide at 227 crashes, per Call Sam.
That same analysis found Oakland County recorded 161 bicycle-related crashes in 2023, the second-highest county total in Michigan behind Wayne County. Still, the county's overall roadways remain comparatively safe: Oakland County posted a traffic fatality rate of 0.51 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2024, less than half the statewide rate of 1.06 and the national rate of 1.20, according to the Road Commission for Oakland County.
